© Luca Concas
Ensemble Salomone Rossi
A Treasury of Jewish Baroque Music
on the 400th anniversary of the edition of Salomone Rossi’s “Canti di Salomone” (Venice 1623)
Nicolò Balducci sopranist
Lydia Cevidalli e Jamiang Santi violin and viola
Maria Calvo cello
Giovanni Togni harpsichord
music Salomone Rossi, Abraham Caceres, 18th-century anonymous, George Friedrich Händel, Benedetto Marcello, Antonio Vivaldi, Cristiano Giuseppe Lidarti
Printed between 1622 and 1623, The Songs of Solomon is a collection of thirty-three psalms, hymns and synagogal music to Hebrew texts by Salomone Rossi, an Italian Jewish violinist and composer who served at the court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua. There could be no better interpreters for it than the prestigious ensemble of the same name, who, for over thirty years, have patiently researched the Jewish contribution to Western music, from the Baroque to the present day. The collection includes an important essay by Rabbi Leon of Modena on the appropriateness of vocal polyphony in place of the ancient monophonic tradition and the cantillation of biblical texts in Jewish worship, as exemplified by the Hebrew Intonations transcribed by Benedetto Marcello from various Venetian synagogues and included, a century later, in his Estro poetico e armonico.
